Tag Archives: Tim Holt

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Directed by John Huston
Warner Bros.

In his review of Elmore Leonard’s 1995 novel Riding the Rap, Martin Amis wrote that “Mr. Leonard has only one plot. All his thrillers are Pardoner’s Tales, in which Death roams the land — usually Miami or Detroit — disguised as money.”

The same could be said of John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but instead of the duffel bags full of cash found in Leonard’s hard-boiled crime novels, money in this film takes the form of gold.

The gold in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre isn’t just a disguise for death, either; it’s the impetus for all manner of human striving and weakness, and brings out the best and the worst in the men who seek it.

As for the film itself, it mostly brings out the best in all of its actors. Neither Humphrey Bogart nor Tim Holt are completely able to shed their well-worn personas, but the same cannot be said of Walter Huston, the director’s father, who is pitch-perfect in his role. (Also, it’s likely that many people who watch The Treasure of the Sierra Madre today will have never seen Tim Holt in any of his countless B westerns and therefore have little trouble accepting him in his role.)

Bogart plays Fred C. Dobbs, a man who finds himself penniless in Tampico, Mexico. He meets fellow American drifter Bob Curtin (Holt) and together they get jobs working in the oilfields, but their unscrupulous employer runs off without paying them, leaving them back where they started. However, luck smiles on them, and after winning a little money they hook up with an old prospector named Howard (Walter Huston) and head for the Sierra Madre mountains to mine their fortune. Howard warns Dobbs and Curtin of the dangers of “gold fever,” but they both claim they’ll deal with their windfalls sensibly if they strike it rich.

No points will be awarded first-time viewers who correctly predict that the protagonists will both strike it rich and succumb to greed and paranoia.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is based on the 1927 novel by the mysterious author “B. Traven.” Little is known about the possibly German-born novelist who probably lived most of his life in Mexico, which is where most of his fiction is set. According to the February 2, 1948, issue of Time, Traven was paid $5,000 for the screen rights to his novel. Traven was such a mysterious figure that although director Huston frequently corresponded with him, when it came time to meet Traven, a nervous translator named “Hal Croves” showed up in his place, claiming to be a close friend of Traven’s. Huston hired Croves as a technical adviser on the film, paying him $150 a week. Huston strongly suspected (but could never conclusively determine) that “Croves” was really Traven.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was nominated for four Oscars — best picture, best director, best supporting actor for Walter Huston, and best screenplay. It won every Academy Award for which it was nominated except for best picture.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a great film. It’s also one of those rare movies — like Casablanca — that even people who “don’t like old movies” will usually enjoy. It has excellent pacing, an involving story, and believable characters, but most importantly, it has authenticity. It was filmed mostly on location in Mexico, and the Mexican characters actually speak Spanish. It’s ironic that this is the movie that gave us the most enduringly stereotypical “Mexican” line — “I don’t have to show you any steenking batches!” — because it’s one of the few films from the ’40s in which Mexican characters actually speak Spanish, and without even subtitles to make things easier on a gringo audience.

Tim Holt’s second postwar western, Under the Tonto Rim, is a lot like his first postwar western, Thunder Mountain (1947). Both are RKO films produced by Herman Schlom and directed by Lew Landers, with screenplays by Norman Houston that are based on Zane Grey novels.

And even though Tim Holt plays a different character in Under the Tonto Rim than he did in Thunder Mountain, Richard Martin is back as his Irish-Mexican sidekick, Chito Jose Gonzalez Bustamonte Rafferty, the same character he played in Thunder Mountain. Chito is tall and handsome, and has a way with the ladies, but he’s also a barrel of laughs, and has a way with malapropisms like “He swallowed it hook, line, and stinker.”

In Under the Tonto Rim, Tim Holt plays Brad Canfield, the new owner of the Rim Rock Stage Line. In the first reel of the film, one of his stagecoaches is held up by masked bandits who carry off the Wells Fargo box, kidnap Lucy Dennison (Nan Leslie) — a beautiful blonde with a mysterious past — and kill his friend Andy (Jay Norris), a young stage driver who was about to be married.

No one ever said running a stage line in a B western was easy.

Chito and Brad ride into Wicksburg and describe their attackers to Captain McLean of the Arizona Rangers. All the raiders wore black masks, except for the leader, who wore a gray, spotted bandanna

Capt. McLean tells Brad and Chito that the Tonto Rim Gang’s hideout is somewhere under the Tonto Rim.

Before you jump to the conclusion that the Tonto Rim Gang are a bunch of clowns, naming themselves after their hideout isn’t quite like a group of criminals on the lam calling themselves “The 285 West Sycamore Street Safe House Gang,” since there are more than a hundred canyons under the Tonto Rim, and the gang could be in any one of them.

Brad and Chito decide to take matters into their own hands. Brad arranges to get himself thrown in jail in Tonto, where one of the captured raiders, Patton (Tony Barrett), is locked up and scheduled to hang. Brad thinks that if he can pass himself off as a criminal with $10,000 buried somewhere, he can escape with Patton, and Patton will lead him to the Tonto Rim Gang. But as they ride into Tonto, Chito expresses his doubts about the plan in his own inimitable way.

Chito: “You know what the word ‘Tonto’ means in Spanish?”
Brad: “No.”
Chito: “It means ‘fool.’ And I bet you that’s what we are.”
Brad: “Ah, keep your shirt on.”
Chito: “I always keep that on. Except on Saturday nights, when I take it back.”
Brad: “Well, this is only Thursday, and I don’t want to attract too much attention yet.”

When they arrive in Tonto, Chito passes himself off as “Ranger Rafferty” to Deputy Joe (Lex Barker), then bends the ear of the sheriff (Harry Harvey) with tales of Brad Canfield the outlaw, and tells him he needs to be taken alive.

Brad’s plan works out, and he and Patton escape together. But Brad’s quickly back in hot water when he finds that Lucy Dennison is part of the gang.

Or is she? And what part will the sultry Juanita (Carol Forman) play?

Under the Tonto Rim is good fun. Before this year, I’d only ever seen Tim Holt as a supporting player in A pictures like My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). He never made a huge impression on me, and after watching a couple of his starring roles in B westerns, I think I know why. He’s a soft-spoken, unassuming guy with average looks. But he projects a lot of steel when he’s the focus of the film, and gives the impression that he won’t stop fighting until the fight is through.

Thunder Mountain, which was directed by Lew Landers, is one of a long line of RKO westerns that were loosely based on Zane Grey novels, including Nevada (1944), Wanderer of the Wasteland (1945), West of the Pecos (1945), Sunset Pass (1946), and Code of the West (1947).

In some cases, a character’s name was all that remained from the source material, and the use of the name “Zane Grey” above the title was just a way to sell the film.

But even when the plots followed Grey’s novels, the RKO westerns based on his books bore little resemblance to Grey’s feverish prose, larger-than-life Romantic heroes, and old-fashioned dime-novel plots. They were straightforward B westerns with straight-shooting heroes, vicious bad guys, comical sidekicks, and beautiful women. They were rarely much longer than an hour, and they were fashioned solely to entertain.

Thunder Mountain, which stars quiet, understated cowboy star Tim Holt (the son of cowboy star Jack Holt and a veteran of World War II — he served in the Army Air Corps as a bombardier), is solidly in this tradition. Its story about greedy land-grabbers and old family feuds is the standard stuff of horse operas, but it’s still a well-made and enjoyable way to spend an hour.

Marvin Hayden (Holt) returns to Grass Valley, and lands smack-dab in the middle of a long-standing feud with the Jorth family. Hayden is the last surviving member of his family, and his romance with the pretty little Ellie Jorth (Martha Hyer) is cut short as soon as they discover each other’s parentage.

Ellie’s brothers, Chick Jorth (Steve Brodie) and Lee Jorth (Robert Clarke), are itching to put Hayden six feet under, but what none of them knows is that the real bad actors in Grass Valley are Trimble Carson (Harry Woods) and his right-hand man Johnny Blue (Tom Keene), who quickly realize how easy it will be to play Hayden against the Jorths.

But like any good western hero, Hayden has a solid group of compadres — the Mexican-Irish Chito Rafferty (Richard Martin), the feisty Irish bar girl Ginger Kelly (Virginia Owen), and the alcoholic and broken-down old lawyer Jim Gardner (Jason Robards Sr.) — not to mention Ellie and her conflicted feelings about Hayden. It’s a foregone conclusion that Hayden will come out on top, just like it’s a foregone conclusion that his vow to never wear a gun will be broken by the end of the picture, but the journey is a fun one, and well worth watching for fans of ’40s B westerns.

“This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” — The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

John Ford’s My Darling Clementine is one of the most lauded westerns of all time.

Most criticism of the film is directed at its numerous historical inaccuracies, not its artistic merits. The ages of the Earp brothers are changed, for what seems no discernible reason. Characters die in the film who didn’t die until decades later. The chain of events that led up to the shootout near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881 is highly fictionalized. In reality, Doc Holliday was a dentist, not a medical doctor. The list goes on and on.

So to enjoy this film, it’s probably best not to watch it with a talkative history junkie.

And if you yourself are a history junkie, try to ignore all the little details and appreciate this film for what it is — one of the great westerns, full of iconic scenes, memorable performances, finely staged action, and little moments that would be copied over and over again in westerns in the decades that followed.

My Darling Clementine is a remake of Allan Dwan’s Frontier Marshal (1939), which starred Randolph Scott as Wyatt Earp. Both films are based on Stuart N. Lake’s book Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal, which was based on interviews with Earp, although most historians suspect that either Lake was embellishing or Earp was.

Again, it really doesn’t matter when it comes to this film. The plot is not the important thing, it’s Ford’s evocation of a frontier town. The rhythms of life, the strong feeling of nighttime, daytime, daybreak — all are perfectly realized. It doesn’t matter that the real Tombstone isn’t anywhere near Monument Valley. Ford shot there because he liked the way it looked.

Day for night shooting can look terribly fake, or just plain terrible, but in this film Ford makes it look beautiful. In one nighttime scene, Wyatt Earp appears on a rooftop, shot in low angle, firing his revolver at a man fleeing on horseback. Behind him is a dark sky full of silvery clouds. The scene clearly wasn’t filmed at night, but it’s still breathtaking.

Henry Fonda’s performance as Wyatt Earp is one of the finest I’ve ever seen in a western. Protagonists in westerns tend to be stalwart men of few words, and Earp is no exception, but the humanity Fonda is able to express merely through his eyes is remarkable.

Fonda generates absolute authority in every scene. Except, of course, when he’s with the pretty Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs). The scene in which he takes her to a Sunday dance at the site where the town’s church will be built is one of the highlights of the film. As Earp walks beside Clementine, the congregation sings “Shall We Gather at the River?” (later to be paid gruesome homage to by Sam Peckinpah when he made The Wild Bunch in 1969). The budding romance between the two is palpable, and is a fine example of Fonda’s wonderful silent acting.

Walter Brennan is also great as Old Man Clanton, the vicious patriarch of a nasty clan. Brennan played a lot of cuddly, blustery sidekicks, but here he’s completely convincing as a cold-eyed villain who tells his boys things like, “When you pull a gun, kill a man.”

I’m less bowled over by Victor Mature’s performance as Doc Holliday. The oily Mature seems to be in a different picture in most of his scenes, as he drinks to escape his past and romances the tragic prostitute Chihuahua (Linda Darnell).

As I said, the liberties Ford takes with history are legion. But as Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp (1994) showed, an accurate recitation of the facts doesn’t necessarily make for compelling drama. And who cares about the actual details of the shootout near the O.K. Corral when we have things in this film like Earp standing perfectly still as a stagecoach pulls in, then running to his left as soon as it kicks up a trail of dust, nearly invisible even to the viewer as he fires several shots and hits his target?

Producer Daryl F. Zanuck notoriously tinkered with this film. He thought Ford’s original version was too long, so he had director Lloyd Bacon shoot some new footage, and then re-edited the film himself. While some of Ford’s lost footage has been unearthed, his original version is lost. Would it have been a better film? Possibly. Is the version we are left with still a great film, and one of the greatest American westerns? Absolutely.